by Annabel Lyon
Acknowledgements
MANY THANKS TO Denise Bukowski and Anne Collins. I gratefully acknowledge the financial assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts.
The following books were particularly helpful: for Macedonian history, Plutarch’s Life of Alexander, N.G.L. Hammond and G. T. Griffith’s A History of Macedonia Volume II: 550–336 BC and The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume IV: The Fourth Century BC; for ancient medicine, Hippocratic Writings, G.E.R. Lloyd, editor, translated by J. Chadwick and W. N. Mann; for Aristotle’s life and thought, Werner Jaeger’s Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His Development, translated by Richard Robinson; Jonathan Barnes’s Aristotle: A Brief Introduction; W. T. Jones’s A History of Western Philosophy: The Classical Mind; and Martha Nussbaum’s The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. For translations of Aristotle’s work, I have relied primarily on the Loeb Classical Library series and Penguin Classics. The translation of Aristotle’s will, above, is R. D. Hick’s (Loeb Classical Library).
For a fictional account of Aristotle’s time in Macedon from Alexander’s perspective, see Mary Renault’s excellent 1969 novel Fire from Heaven.
The translations I have quoted directly are Meno by Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett; Bacchae by Euripides, translated by Kenneth Cavander; and Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, translated by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald. The epigraph is from Plutarch’s Lives: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume, Dryden translation, revised by Arthur Hugh Clough. Carolus, Philes, Illaeus, Athea, the medics, the horses, and the groom are fictional creations. Scholars will note that I have omitted the philosopher Theophrastus, a follower of Aristotle, who is thought to have accompanied him to Macedonia. Scholars will note, too, that I have delayed Speusippus’s death for the sake of narrative convenience. Scholars will turn purple over my sending Aristotle to Chaeronea. There is no evidence, in his or any other writings, of his presence there.
Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders; in the event of an inadvertent omission or error, please contact the publisher.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ANNABEL LYON’S short-story collection, Oxygen, and book of novellas, The Best Thing for You, were published in Canada to wide acclaim. Her juvenile novel, All-Season Edie, has been translated into three languages. Her first novel, The Golden Mean, is a Canadian best seller and is being published in six languages. It won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Lyon’s short fiction has appeared in Toronto Life, the Journey Prize anthology, and the Harvard Review. She lives in British Columbia with her husband and two children.
